Abstract
We examine the degree of job commitment and job satisfaction within three different corporate sectors: large, nationally recognized firms (defined as industry leaders by the Fortune magazine survey), regionally based multi-establishment firms, and firms with local operations only. Commitment and satisfaction in large, nationally recognized companies are lower than in locally based companies, even after relevant job and individual characteristics are controlled. The strength and pervasiveness of these negative findings are interpreted in terms of the close supervision, pressured working environments, and deskilling of jobs typical of the leading firms, and in the apparent failure of these firms' efforts to manipulate their symbolic environments. The vision of the large, nationally recognized corporation as the home of the committed is not supported. We discuss the implications of these results for future research on segmented labor markets. Job commitment has been an important topic in sociological theory at least since Whyte conceptualized the organization man. However, the pervasiveness of the organization man and the completeness of his job commitment, while extensively studied in other countries (Cole; Dore; Ouchi), have been neglected topics in studies of the United States. The current paper seeks to address this gap in our knowledge by analyzing a basic characteristic of employing organizations-their corporate sector-and relating it to the job commitment of workers. Three distinct corporate sectors, defined by their visibility and reputational spheres, are used to test for different levels of job commitment. These three sectors are large, nationally recognized corporations, regionally based multi-plant corporations, and locally based firms.
Published Version
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